It’s no secret that the woke crusaders in Hollywood were starving for a culture-war win. So it was only a matter of time before leftist magazines like Vanity Fair eagerly hitched their DEI wagons to the early box office success of Christopher Nolan’s twist on Homer’s Odyssey.
Vanity Fair Features Editor Hillary Busis prematurely popped the proverbial champagne in her July 19 screed headlined, “The Odyssey’s Epic Box Office Haul Breaks The ‘Go Woke, Go Broke’ Myth.”
Yes, the film was criticized for wokeness in casting, and yes, it made $264 million over the weekend. But that doesn't prove “flops” like the 2016 feminist-driven Ghostbusters and the live-action The Little Mermaid (2023) weren’t due to politics. She beamed that the movie’s success “put to bed an old conservative bugbear: the notion that Hollywood movies bomb when they’re overly influenced by the politics and qualities this cohort defines as ‘woke,’ a concept so broad as to be essentially meaningless.” Holy fallacy, Batman! That’s textbook begging the question!
Here’s the problem: Attaching Christopher Nolan’s name to any movie immediately gives it an instant edge that most feature-length films of this generation — especially those with underlying alphabet mafia political messaging — lack: a film director with a Midas Touch pedigree.
The Economist reported July 16 that Nolan “is the seventh-highest-grossing film director ever, and the most important British film-maker since Alfred Hitchcock.” He’s virtually a statistical anomaly in the movie-making ecosphere. The Economist even concluded that the seven most dangerous words to ask any film aficionado were, “What do you think of Christopher Nolan?” Nolan could pass gas on screen and people will buy tickets.
Busis, of course, doesn’t bother addressing this glaring variable. If she did, her argument would predictably implode. Obviously, any “woke” movie could be successful in theory if they just manage to land a modern-day Cecil B. DeMille like Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, or Peter Jackson to lead it. In essence, find a needle in a haystack … then jackpot! But Busis proceeded to just lash out at the “manufactured controversy” of DEI messaging in cinema:
The real truth is that normal people, regular folks whose brains haven’t been pickled by constant exposure to the worst opinions on the internet, are unaware of this manufactured controversy. And even if they have heard about it, they certainly aren’t letting it influence their viewing habits.
Interesting. So using her logic, why did Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) — which was known for explicitly departing from the woke political messaging of its 2016 box office bomb of a predecessor — achieve such monumental success? The film grossed $204 million globally on a $75 million budget, compared to the 2016 film costing Sony an over $70 million loss. Even Vanity Fair itself reported on the film’s “nostalgia-rich” triumph In November 2021.
Busis’s gripe reveals itself to have so many holes in it that it could effectively pass for a block of Swiss cheese.
In fact, none of Busis’s propaganda proved that shoe-horning clunky-armor-wearing Elliot, er, Ellen Page (whatever “it” is) waddle-running like a penguin at the beginning of the film yields lasting dividends. If anything, her inadvertent admission is simply that all the controversial casting and character arc choices needed was Nolan’s prestige to dilute any consumer backlash.
Elliot (Ellen) Page, visibly having difficulty holding herself up with fake armor. Like watching a toddler struggling through the desert. If Christopher Nolan wanted to go woke, he could’ve at least given Ronda Rousey a haircut, and casted her as Achilles instead.
Part of story… pic.twitter.com/uXvXnSKm5j— ThePatrioticDog (@ThePatrioticDog) July 16, 2026
As Outkick’s Jon Root noted in a July 19 review posted on X: “Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey IS the Trojan Horse. Let me explain… The Trojan Horse is a deception, meant to be invited in as an innocent gift & piece of art, yet it contains the elements used to destroy its receiver.” Root went for the jugular:
The diverse casting is an overt distraction, and political message. Nolan has duped hundreds of thousands of movie goers into believing these casting don’t matter in the grand scheme. It’s a slippery slope to welcome in more trans actors/actresses and race-swaps in future films. This movie is accepted by many who have fought against the Trojan horses in our society that have ruined homes, schools, churches, relationships, and business. People are lost in a 3+ hour lotus flower of a movie that is objectively a desecration of western society’s quintessential story of the hero’s journey.
Consider other major TV and movie flops Busis didn’t bother bringing up that offered heavy doses of anti-masculine, alphabet people content: Disney+’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Snow White (2025), CW’s Batwoman, Disney Pixar’s Lightyear (2022) and Disney’s Strange World (2022). One of the latest entries is none other than DC Studios’ Supergirl (2026), which is currently projected to lose $125 million on a $170 million production budget.
How many other directors of woke adaptations of iconic IPs could pull off what Nolan did? Not many, for sure. Busis sneered in her conclusion that “Verified X users with names like Roman Helmet Guy can cry all they want about how ‘the positive reviews (by professional movie critics) are evidence of a woke conspiracy to overthrow Western civilization.’ The rest of us will be too busy enjoying ourselves in IMAX 70mm to notice.”
That’s okay, Busis. The rest of us with basic business sense will just keep laughing at you as the “go woke, go broke” pattern repeats — because talent like Nolan’s is the exception, not the rule.
